


easy for once

by alderations



Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [24]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Automata, Clockwork - Freeform, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mechtober, Sensory Deprivation, Whumptober 2020, dubiously consensual repairs, nastya commands ts without really realizing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27186134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: Brian throws his hands down on the armrests of the pilot’s chair, before finally turning to face the Toy Soldier. “Alright. I’ll bite. Why are you pretending to sneeze?”“I Have No Idea What You’re Talking About,” it insists, before fake-sneezing again. It’s not even imitating the sound of a sneeze, just yelling “achoo” at the top of its nonexistent lungs.(Whumptober Day 24: sensory deprivation; Mechtober Day 22-24: clockwork)
Relationships: Drumbot Brian & The Toy Soldier, Nastya Rasputina & The Toy Soldier
Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950916
Comments: 10
Kudos: 107
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	easy for once

“Ah-CHOO!”

Brian throws his hands down on the armrests of the pilot’s chair, before finally turning to face the Toy Soldier. “Alright. I’ll bite. Why are you pretending to sneeze?”

“I Have No Idea What You’re Talking About,” it insists, before fake-sneezing again. It’s not even imitating the sound of a sneeze, just yelling “a _ choo”  _ at the top of its nonexistent lungs.

Leaning over the back of Brian’s chair, Nastya gives it a disdainful glare. “So you’re just screaming sneeze noises for no reason.”

It scowls at her, at least as much as its wooden face can muster a scowl. “I Genuinely Don’t Know What You Mean, Old Chap! Ah-ah—ahCHOO!”

“That. That sound. That’s not a sneeze?” Nastya prods.

When the Toy Soldier opens its mouth to respond, its jaw sticks, and it just ends up gawking helplessly at her while its arms move in jerky arcs as if it’s glitching through time. Nastya’s disdain melts into concern, not that she’d ever let anyone accuse her of such a thing, and Brian stands up from his chair and approaches it with a hand outstretched.

“TS, it’s okay. Don’t try to talk if you can’t,” he reassures it, catching its arm gently mid-swing. “I… I’ve never seen you glitch like this, songbird. What’s going on?”

Once it stops trying to force the same speech pathway over and over, it seems to relax a bit, its free arm flopping against its side. After a few seconds, it speaks with a thin, strained voice. “I Don’t Know. Am I Sick?”

“Can you… get sick?” Nastya asks, looking it up and down with a more critical eye.

“Of Course Not! I’m Not Alive, After All.” It’s usually chipper about its inhumanity, but now it just sounds meek, enough so that Brian instinctively rests a hand against its forehead as if to check its temperature.

He’s surprised to find that it actually feels hot. “You’re burning up,” he points out, wrapping his arm around its shoulders. “Can you run a diagnostic scan, or…?”

The Toy Soldier glances up at him, then down at its own hands. Its fingers still twitch every few seconds, and its voice is almost too quiet to make out. “I’m Not A Computer, My Good Drumbot. I’m Just Clockwork.”

“I—oh.” Brian rubs his thumb across the back of its neck to try and soothe it, even as he looks to Nastya for help. “Can we help? You seem distressed.”

“I Am Quite Fine!”

It doesn’t have enough time to shrug him off before Nastya pushes off from the back of the pilot’s chair and bends over in front of it to study its face. “No, you’re not. You’re ticking all out of sync. Let us help.”

“Yes Ma’am,” it responds, sitting up ramrod-straight. Brian grits his jaw and shoots Nastya a Look, which she ignores in favor of helping the Toy Soldier to its feet. “What Do You Need?”

Nastya reaches for its cap, then thinks better and pats it awkwardly on the shoulder instead. “How do you feel? Let’s start with that.”

That’s a difficult question, apparently, because it glances between Nastya and Brian for several seconds before attempting to respond. “I—I—I Feel Like I’m Fuzzy,” it starts. “It’s Like I Have Cotton Balls Stuck In All My Gears.”

“That’s something,” says Brian.

“And—Like Nastya Said. Everything Is Ticking Wrong.”

Nastya tips its chin up with her thumb to study its eyes, analyzing the way its clockwork irises spin out of time. “You could actually have something in your gears. In that case, we’d have to open you up and find it. Otherwise, well, my first suggestion would be to… turn you off and back on again. If that’s, um, something you can do.”

“Nastya,” Brian warns.

“I Can Do That,” the Toy Soldier insists, still eager to do as Nastya says. “If You—If You Catch One Of My Cogs And Stop It, Then Turn It Manually, I’ll, Ah, Reset.”

By the time it finishes speaking, Nastya is already pulling a tiny screwdriver out of her coat and examining it for any obvious gaps in its wooden exterior, while Brian shoves an arm between them to slow her down. “Wait, Nastya, wait,” he begs. “TS. Is this going to hurt you?”

It tries to tilt its head at him, but something catches and it ends up twitching fruitlessly instead. “Not At All, My Dear Fellow! I-I Won’t Feel A Thing!”

“If you say so,” Brian murmurs. He still keeps his arm draped across its shoulders as Nastya unbuttons the top of its shirt and cautiously pokes around between the polished wood planes of its chest.

“Is this a good spot? I can’t see very well.”

The Toy Soldier reaches up to wedge its fingers under the panel covering the space where a human’s heart would be, then prizes it up to reveal the overwhelmingly intricate cogs whirring away inside its chest. “Anything You Can Catch, My Good Chum!”

“Alright. Are you ready?” Nastya asks, steadying it with a hand on the covered side of its chest. She can’t remember the last time she ever treated the damn automaton with this much kindness, and she fully intends to murder Brian if he ever tells anyone about this.

It nods.

“Here goes.” She reaches in as delicately as her cold hands will let her, until the tip of the screwdriver catches on a shiny, pink-tinted cog that looks almost like a pastiche of a heart. Maybe that’s just the romantic in Nastya. It resists at first, until she sets her wrist and pushes it in counterclockwise, applying just enough force to grind it to a halt. The rest of its gears begin to stutter and stop, first at its center, then moving slowly outward. Several minutes tick by before Brian watches its eyes go still.

He has to take a deep, if useless, breath to calm himself down. “Alright. Are you still in there, TS?”

No response. Brian tightens the arm around its shoulders and reaches up with his other hand to run a thumb across its wooden cheekbone. “Please start it again,” he tells Nastya.

“I’m trying.” It takes much more force to get it going again, apparently, though Nastya is hesitant to put too much energy into her screwdriver and snap off any prongs.

The wood under Brian’s hands continues to cool, but then the Toy Soldier speaks up. “Brian? Are You Still There?”

“Yes, doll, I’m here,” he answers with relief. “Are you with me?”

“Brian?”

Nastya looks up at its face and frowns. “We’re working on getting you started again. No need to worry.”

“I Can’t Hear You,” it says over Nastya. “I Can’t Feel Anything. Or See. Or Hear.”

Raising her elbow to get a bit more leverage, Nastya finally forces the big pink cog through a quarter turn, listening to the gentle  _ tick  _ of all the interlocking teeth as they move in tandem. “How is it still conscious?” she grumbles under her breath.

Brian doesn’t want to think about that.

“I Really Don’t Like This,” the Toy Soldier murmurs. Without its usual accompaniment of ticking gears and whirring parts, its voice sounds too human, too alone. “I Can’t Even Tell If I’m Still Talking.”

“Nastya, can you hurry?” Brian nudges.

She continues to do her best, which takes a lot of effort, but after a couple of turns, the cog starts to spin with relative ease. “It’ll take a minute to start up again,” she explains. “Hopefully that’ll work, though.”

“I’ve… I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard it, y’know, communicate discomfort. I don’t want it to hurt.”

Nastya rolls her eyes. “It just said it can’t feel anything. It’ll be fine.”

“How do you  _ know?” _

Before Nastya can come up with enough of a response to appease Brian, the Toy Soldier begins to move again—first tiny twitches in the machinery of its chest, then its neck, then its arms as more and more of its cogs begin to spin on their own. Nastya pulls her screwdriver away and watches with a precise gaze until it finally stands upright and turns to look at Brian. “What Do You Look So Sad For, Drumbot?”

He lets out a massive sigh. “You  _ worried  _ me! Are you alright?”

“Quite Fine! Feeling Much Better, In Fact!”

Brian nods a couple times as Nastya replaces the paneling on the Toy Soldier’s chest, then gives up and folds it in a hug. “Just—I just—I’m glad you’re okay. You sounded so scared.”

It pats him awkwardly on the shoulder until he lets go of it, then looks down at Nastya. “Thank You For The Repairs. I Suppose You’re An Admissible Engineer After All.”

“Admissible,” she scoffs, dusting off her screwdriver with the hem of her shirt. “Bullshit. And if you tell anyone I repaired you, I  _ will  _ push you into the engine.”

“Hmph!”

**Author's Note:**

> SHOUTOUT to bf Marius for being my Automaton Sensitivity Reader lol i love u babe. thank u.
> 
> anyway I've already hurt TS several times this month but as soon as "toy soldier sickfic" entered my mind, I couldn't NOT write that. C'mon. Hopefully you're all as enamored with the concept as I am, even if I made it Upsetting in my usual way. If you enjoyed this, share your feelings? I love feelings. I even have them sometimes. It's Great. /s
> 
> I hope you're all taking care of yourselves and getting PUMPED for Halloween if that's your thing. ;3c


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